I live in a society that celebrates people who do TED Talks that go viral, people who own three properties before they are 30 and become CEOs by 40, people who found organisations and write best-selling books. People who, in short, achieve. I live in a Type A, success-orientated society, where ‘success’ is understood to apply to the the achievements of the individual, and stands as a barometer for personal value.

We all swim in these waters - even those of us who profess to live by other values and alternative paradigms that emphasise collective good over individual gain. Success-culture envelopes our bodies and moves across our skin in the most natural way imaginable. This is why there is such a proliferation of organisations and movements trying to create a better, more just, and more environmentally sustainable world, and why so many people feel the need to make their mark and instigate even more. We know, on one level, that change happens only when we put personal agendas aside to work together for the collective good. But to put a personal ‘success’ agenda to rest is as shocking to the system as a fish that has leapt onto dry land, or a baby who gasps a first breath. To many of us, it feels like death. Who am I if I don’t ‘achieve’?

I write these words with the shame of remembering my own self-promotion as I have sought personal success, and also a degree of compassion towards myself for being so thoroughly human.

Also, as a woman and a feminist, I write a very tentative critique of the over-valuing of personal achievement, because for too long women have put aside our personal agendas for the (seeming) benefit of everybody else. Women have been socialised not to be personally ambitious, and when we are, countless barriers are put in our way to prevent us from reaching our goals. As I write about the need to lay aside the drive for personal success in pursuit of a greater good, I do so with a tight-fisted caveat that women and other marginalised groups must not obliterate our selves in the process.

It is my firm belief that one must become all that one can possibly be in order for us to create a world marked by justice, equality and caring custodianship of our earth. Surely we are in an excellent position to bring about these things when everybody is able to reach their potential. But ‘reaching one’s potential’ is not the same thing as the way that my society understands ‘achieving’. It is very possible that reaching one’s potential involves TED Talks and book authorships and CEO roles - and it is of upmost importance that women, people of colour, LGBTIQ people and people with disabilities are fully represented in these achievements. However, one may reach their potential in a great myriad of other ways, that do not attract much congratulations and are not celebrated as any great ‘achievement’.

Perhaps paradoxically, we only reach the heights, depths and outer-edges of the potential self when we first give away our desire for personal success. We must escape the invisible, lukewarm waters of the surrounding culture’s value-system - which is the very value-system that is killing us - and breathe something new. Because the pursuit of personal success only leads to two things: either personal success, or personal failure. There is nothing that will change the world in that. Personal achievements keep us fat and content with our lives, and unaware that we could be playing a wholly different game. But by giving up the pursuit, we can open ourselves up to playing the critical part that is required of us to play - whatever that part looks like - and work as co-creators of a better world.

The difficult thing is how to tell when we are motivated by our desire for ‘success’, and when we are motivated by a deeper stirring to be all that we can be. I don’t think there are any easy answers here: only the quiet, continual attentiveness to what feels joyful and right. Somehow, we must extract ourselves from the value-system of the surrounding culture, and re-align ourselves to something more truthful. Perhaps this feels like filling one’s lungs with a jolt of cool, crisp air.

Yesterday I read an article by an author who was complaining that most of her friends were boring. More than that, they were badly behaved, in that mediocre self-centred kind of way: bringing cheap wine to the author’s dinner party and drinking twice as much of their good stuff; taking up all the air-time with bone-wearying monologues about traffic and dull jobs, without bothering to ask a question of their host.

I don’t know this author’s friends, but to me she was describing people who were spiritually depleted. Comfortable, late-career, middle-class, entitled and getting close to empty.

Someone recently told me that to her, the word ‘spiritual’ meant something close to ‘spirited’. Adventurous, curious, generous, open-hearted – a ‘spirited’ person is someone who lives life by paying attention to what is going on, and heartily embraces the mystery of what may or may not come next. I rather like this definition of ‘spiritual’.

There are many things that cause a person’s spirit to ebb away: poverty, racism, sexism and all the other great downward-pointing thumbs of this would that attempt to pin people to the ground and keep them in their place. It also occurs to me that a person’s spirit may become weak and atrophied in the presence of too much comfort. The author wrote longingly of her younger friends, who lacked secure employment and may never own their own home, but were plenty fun to hang out with. These were spirited people.

It seems to me that for some, the antidote to being a bore is not simply to ensure that one is well-travelled, because one can be comfortable, self-centred and boring almost as well in Nepal as they can be while guzzling nice wine on a friend’s couch. Just talk to any tourism operator. I think a better cure for boringness is to tend to one’s spirit, and give it the space to be adventurous, curious, generous, open-hearted and attentive. Funnily enough, your spirit can do all this on your friend’s couch: the Himalayas, if you have the means, are optional.

The looming crosses are neon red, glowing softly in the chilly June air. We are strolling around the Hobart harbour but are compelled to stop and gaze upwards; I pull out my phone and take some pictures. They feel majestic, sinister, overpowering, beautiful. I bristle a little in their presence and say to Dave, “This feels like one big up-yours to Christianity”. “Christianity or Christendom?” he asks.

Predictably, many Christians are offended by the giant red inverted crosses, which they take as a direct, council-endorsed assault on their faith. Many are signing a petition calling on Hobart’s Lord Mayor to have them removed. The inverted cross is a potent symbol, having been used at times to express anti-Christian sentiment. But there is no descriptive plaque that accompanies these red crosses. We are left wondering what it all means.

These crosses are part of Hobart’s Dark MoFo winter festival, and behind Dark MoFo is Mona, the Museum of Old and New Art. This big, brash gallery is the creation of gambling tycoon David Walsh. Mona aims to make people uncomfortable; to compel them to ask questions and to think. Mona, one might say, aims to offend. The institution is intentionally sacrilege, and is not particularly concerned with your religious sentimentality.

Mona courts controversy because it can; because it is incredibly well-flushed in private dollars, and has become a hot and lucrative tourist destination for visitors to Tasmania. It occurred to me recently that the things that get under my skin about Mona – the bigness, the conceitedness, the way that people flock there and fork out money to be part of it – well, these are all things that could have been said of the church, at least at its high-water mark in the history of Christendom. The gallery is cathedral-like in proportions, and draws in pilgrims from around the world. We stand in its cavernous wings contemplating mysteries that are as evocative as they are elusive. We wonder what it all means.

While Mona and everything it represents is all the rage, the traditional institutions of Christianity are increasingly seen as outdated and irrelevant. This, I believe, is the infuriating kernel that is irritating so many Christians, when they witness the public symbology of inverted crosses rising up and embracing the harbour of Hobart. The church, simply, has lost its position of power in modern Australian society and indeed most of the West: no longer do a majority of people look to it for meaning, for solace, for moral authority, for social connection. The corruption and abuse of the church and its institutions is now thoroughly in the public spotlight. People, overwhelmingly, are losing faith. The church exists on the edges of our modern society – which is rapidly moving on. People are looking in new places for the things they once received from the church.

Yet the inverted cross holds another meaning. It is said that St Peter was crucified on an up-side-down cross, because he felt he was unworthy to die in the same way as his master. The inverted cross, then, is also a symbol of humility. In the ruins of Christendom, and in a time when people have lost faith and lost interest, humility is an appropriate stance for Christians to take. If not the church, where are people seeking deeper meaning? How can churches meet them authentically in that quest – in dialogue, not dogma? How can Christians be part of a genuine conversation about the key questions of our time, and contribute their resources and faithful narratives in a way that is helpful and enriching? And importantly, how will the church defy lies, hatred and arrogance, and stand for truth, love and humility instead? These are the questions that the church should be engaged in, rather than getting defensive about perceived attacks.

It is from a marginal place that Christianity was birthed, on the edges of religious, economic and political power. The cross only became the universal symbol for Christianity after Constantine made it the dominant religion for the empire in the 4th century CE. Prior to that, Christianity existed furtively in the shadows, using discrete symbols made with sticks and dirt to display their faith, rather than crosses on large, publicly-funded buildings. Christianity found its existence in the margins of the dominant paradigm – and it seems that Christianity, after 17 centuries, has found its way back to that place again.

If the church feels like it is dying, it is because in a sense it is. But if the Christian story teaches us anything, it is that death is the place from which new life springs. Owning its death as a power-holder and its new place on the margins will be the place from which the church will find relevance again.

The important question for the church is not, “How can we stop ourselves from dying?” or “How can we stop people attacking us?” The question, rather, is, “How can we transform ourselves to bring deep healing to the world?” If the conversation, for the moment, is happening at the foot of an inverted cross, then that’s where the church needs to be, also.

I have always written. It’s true that I love it: the way my mind slows down to walk apace with the rhythm of the pen, the way creations, sometimes, unfold in front of me. I love the incubation of an idea, the birthing onto a page, the process of crafting. These are all reasons why I write.

The question for me is not ‘Why write?’, because the answer to that is obvious (I love it). My question is, ‘Why publish’? – and it’s this question that I find more difficult to answer.

The truth is that a large part of why I have sought publication over the years is as a source of affirmation. There is something deeply affirming about writing words that others want to read. There is something so satisfying about witnessing Likes on Facebook or reading comments that readers care to write. It feels like an indication of my value, my worthwhileness, my goodness perhaps. My publishing, to a large degree, serves my very human need of acceptance, belonging and esteem.

This, by the way, is why it is hard for me to write controversial things. My quest for truth butts up, time and time again, with my ache for acceptance. It’s not easy to stick my neck out.

And yet, when I search, I can find another reason as to why I publish. This other motivation comes from the part of me that already knows my essential goodness, and is free to speak and to write my truth from that sturdy piece of ground. I write not in order to belong, but from a place where I know that I already do (in one broader sense or another) – and as such, I publish my words as a kind of gift. I publish in the belief that my words, when faithfully and truthfully written, will play some role in the healing of our word. Small or large, no one can say, and I can’t guess the impact of anything I create. My words, once thrown out there into the world, will go on some kind of journey, and in a sense I’m just a humble craftswoman, creating because I am made that way, while the Great Mystery takes care of the rest.

In each instance, I write something that is only a slither of what is a much larger truth. This is part of the humility of publishing: the knowledge that my words represent only the most partial of understandings, the best of what I have and know right now, and that sometimes I’m wrong. I will faithfully create and send my creations into the world, regardless.

The movement for me is from the place where I crave to be accepted, to the place where I already know I am. On that new piece of ground, I publish not to be affirmed, but as a humble gift to the world. Fragile, misshapen and with occasional cracks: this is what I have. If my writing can, occasionally, let in some light, then I hope this will be good enough for me.

There is a moment, at the start of the salsa class, when the instructor says, “Guys, ask a lady to dance”. This is very uncomfortable for me. I have to stand there, on display, hoping that someone, anyone, will pick me. It’s kind of like being back in school and praying that I won’t get picked last when the captains are selecting their teams – only worse because it’s my fundamental attractiveness that is being assessed. I gaze into the middle distance and wait.

Sometimes the instructor will mix things up, and say, “Ladies, ask a man to dance”. This is also a little bit excruciating. In this case, I have to utilise my personal agency and do the choosing myself. This ignites yet another set of fears: if I make a beeline to a particular man, will he think me overly enthusiastic? What if he sees me approaching and thinks, Oh no, not her! I was hoping for that other girl with the pretty long brown hair! Also, it requires me to admit to someone that I find them a little bit attractive. I would rather keep that information to myself, which is why sometimes I pick someone I really don’t find attractive. It’s very complicated for me, and I’m sure there are some meta-narratives going on about women and agency and desire and things like that.

I feel like I should mention – just in case anyone is wondering – that I am in a long-term relationship, and happily so. My man doesn’t come to salsa classes because it’s not his thing, and this is fine. Despite all this, I still wish to be attractive to other people, and – of course! – I still find other people attractive. The salsa scene is a place where people play with feelings of desire, within the bounds of a single dance – which I think is what makes it so tantalising.

After the class is a social dance, where a live band comes on and people go nuts whizzing each other about the dancefloor. A colleague gave me some advice about this recently. She said, “Dress pretty, so all the good dancers ask you to dance.” My aim, when I go to salsa, is to dance as much as possible – I have no time to waste standing up against the wall watching everyone else. Picking out some awkward steps with a beginner who has no rhythm is not much fun either.

So the next week I dressed as pretty as I could muster. I was hoping that this would cause all the male dancers from the intermediate class to queue up to dance with me: my bold lip and fabulous feather earrings fooling them into believing that I was a lot more than two classes into my salsa career.

But it didn’t really work out that way. In fact, I have figured out that the way to maximise my time dancing is to take matters into my own hands and do the asking myself. Of course, it’s a bit confronting, as it requires me overcoming some of the afore-mentioned fears. Being seen as an overly forward woman. A bit desperate maybe. Look at her on the prowl, surely these men are thinking. She has to do the asking because otherwise no one will dance with her.

But here’s the truth. It doesn’t matter whether a man finds me pretty or not. And it doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m too forward, or too desperate, or too anything. I can’t read any man’s mind, and even if I could, his thoughts have no bearing on who I am or what I can do.

And another thing – if he doesn’t want to dance with me, he can just say no!

Screw dressing pretty – I’m just gonna ask the people I wanna ask, and dance the night away. Woot!

I published a version of this piece originally on 8 May 2018, and a few days later I took it down. The reason is that the piece inspired very mixed responses from readers, and so I concluded after a few stressful days that while my words were very helpful to some, they were also inadequate for the subject I was dealing with. I wasn’t interested in being the recipient of a social media ‘pile on’, so I removed both the original blog post and its link to Facebook.

Race and whiteness is a fraught topic that I tackled with a degree of naivety, like I was out digging a hole and it suddenly started filling with water. What I want to do now is madly fling dirt back into the hole and fill it up again; pretend like nothing happened and there isn’t water from the pipe I hit going everywhere. But the tender, painful topic of race and whiteness is still there whether we cover it up or not, and I think it’s best we talk about it. I’ll be wrong again, but I do believe that stumbling through important topics is better than being paralysed into silence. Silence is not the answer here.

I decided to re-post the piece, and run it as a conversation with myself: the self from last week, and the self from today.

Last week: Once I participated in some anti-racism training, held in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I was one of around fifty people in our early 20s, and we were crowded into a classroom, sitting on the floor around the edges. Most, but not all, were white college students who had come to this city to help with the rebuilding efforts.

At the time I was working with a predominantly black group doing community organising in a flood-affected black neighbourhood. Most of the other students were working with a predominantly white group doing reconstruction work in that same area. We all needed to think about race, because we were operating in a racially-charged context, and the politics of race were in our bodies.

At one point the facilitator posed a question to the white people in the room. “What do you like about being white?” he asked. Reluctantly, we recalled the many inherent benefits of having recognisably European skin: how it’s easier to get a job or get a loan, how people tend to take us seriously or assume our intelligence, how we have the ability to choose to be around people of our own race and to see people of our own colour constantly on TV and in the public eye. This was my first lesson in white privilege.

Then the facilitator addressed the people in the room who were not white – there were about ten out of the fifty. He asked, “What do you like about being a person of colour?” People responded by talking about the family gatherings that they loved, about dance and food and music, and about the deep culture that had been passed on to them and blessed them now. These things sounded to me to be rich and beautiful.

During the van-ride home, I remember there was one young woman who was upset and angry. She explained that she was Jewish, and while she was categorised as ‘white’ by the dominant American culture because of her skin-tone, she did not identify as white. Her story was not one of exclusive privilege; she recalled, rather, her family experience of exclusion, prejudice and great suffering over many, many years. The young woman felt that during the anti-racism workshop, her deep story was rendered invisible by a paradigm that insisted on seeing her only as white.

I’ve often thought about this woman, and both her pain of not being really seen for who she was, and also the very real privilege she did hold on account of her skin, which was happily in the same tone-range as those holding power. Likewise, I am trying to grow in my awareness of the privilege I experience because I’m Australian-born with European heritage, and yet I refuse to identify as white. My whiteness is not the sum of my story, and it is does not stand in for my culture.

This week: A friend gently reminded me that my ability to not identify as white is one of the many privileges of being white: that I am able to ‘move through the world’ in a way that is neutral, normal, without friction. It’s difficult to know the privilege of whiteness without knowing something of what it’s like to be a person of colour in this country. I can only imagine the racism, discrimination, exclusion and violence.

Last week: In more recent years, I have spent a lot of time with white people who are committed to uncovering their own deep stories: the places, generally in Europe, that their ancestors called home, and the converging events that brought them to this land of first people and migrants. I have done the same – hence spending time with second-cousins-once-removed in Sicily last year.

Mine is a quest to uncover ethnicity underneath whiteness, which tries to cloak everything in a pervasive sheet of ‘white culture’. White culture is a colonising force, and aims towards hegemony and homogeny. This is why I think that peeling back white culture, and seeing what life exists underneath and in our own stories, is an act of decolonisation.

This week: Colonisation has certain beneficiaries, who are the recipients of status and wealth in a system that segregates and robs. I am one of those. It is also true that I and other white people are beneficiaries only in a narrow sense, because I also believe that my deep wellbeing is inextricably linked to the wellbeing of all, and that ‘beneficiaries’ of colonisation can never be really whole while other people are suffering by the same system. In this sense, colonisation is bad for everyone.

And yet – and this cannot be underscored enough – the sheer awfulness and dehumanisation of colonisation is exponentially worse some than for others. I’ll never know what it is to be torn from land and children, or to be kidnapped or tricked and enslaved, or to be hung or shot at or intentionally killed with disease. I don’t know what it’s like to say, “My great-grandmother was enslaved by the British Empire,” or “I don’t know my mother because the government took me away from her as a baby”. I know nothing of that trauma that surely, inevitably, must rumble down the generations.

We live in a system of racism that is part-and-parcel with the system of colonisation: for example, the White Australia Policy, which casts a long shadow today, existed to preserve the dominance of the colonising (British) force. It is this system that thrusts life-limiting racial labels on us, which have very real implications in people’s lives. It is a falsehood to say that ‘race doesn’t matter’, because it so obviously does. It is also true that these racial categories are not all there is to us: how can they be, when they are the work of a system that aims to take away humanity? It is the uncovering of diverse humanity underneath the claims of colonial categories – culture and stories – that is the decolonising act. This is true for everyone.

However, as critics reminded me on social media, one of the despicable crimes of colonisation is that this system has robbed so many people of their deep story and culture, because it ripped them away from their people and land. Some people don’t even know what part of Africa or India or Australia their people are from, because they were violently dragged away so that others could profit from their bodies or their land. Also, even if one were to know and have a connection with their ancestral land, the very real economic implications of colonisation and racism mean that they may not have the resources to travel back. Today I’m wondering: is there a way for people to use the resources they have gained through colonisation to enable others who have been robbed by the same system reconnect to culture, land and language?

Last week: Sometimes people try to borrow practices and clothing from other cultures and claim them as their own, and this is called cultural appropriation. I think the reason we do this is because we are craving what we have lost ourselves: our connection to our stories, our land, our people, our food, our music, our art, our spirituality. It’s like we used to have a diet of fresh veggies and whole-grain foods, and somebody took that away and gave us a loaf of white bread instead. But it is wrong to take what isn’t ours: instead, we need to relocate the good and diverse cultural diets that we once had.

This week: Cultural appropriation is where a dominant culture adopts elements of a minority culture as incorporates them as their own. It is damaging because cultural elements with deep meaning are reduced by the dominant culture to ‘exotic’ fashion items or toys. Kjerstin Johnson says that people not experiencing oppression can ‘play’ temporarily with the ‘exotic’ other, without experiencing discriminations faced by the minority culture this thing is taken from. An Australian example would be people playing the digeridoo simply as a fun musical instrument, without a connection with the origin culture, or consent being obtained.

I believe it is important for us to try to unpack and understand the motivations behind the damaging things we do. This practice gives us a chance to stop doing those things. I’m not suggesting that white people need sympathy: simply healthy self-awareness. All actions stem from a need, and if white people are appropriating things from other cultures, we need to address the need that is within, in good and appropriate ways.

Last week: Recovering our own stories, which still bubble along underneath the slab of white culture, is a deeply re-humanising act. I also think it’s part of the fight against racism, because it is the sharing of stories that breaks down prejudice and binds us together. It is one way we can decolonise ourselves.

This week: a story. A while back I had a conversation with a woman who was a descendent from people who were kidnapped from a Pacific Island country to cut sugarcane in Far North Queensland. My grandfather and great uncles migrated from Sicily to do the same. There was a huge difference in our stories: her family was taken without informed consent; mine emigrated to escape poverty and lack of opportunity. My family found social mobility through wages earned in cane-cutting; hers was locked in servitude because of both the indentured arrangement and because of opportunity-limiting racism. Members of her community were ousted from Australia once their labour was no longer needed; my community was allowed to stay. My family experienced racism in a time in Australia when to be Italian wasn’t really to be white; her family experienced profound exclusion and racism that exists to this day.

Despite the differences, the sharing of these stories enabled us, in that conversation, to be white-but-more-than-white, and black-but-more-than-black. It allowed us to step into a different and deeper dimension, where histories overlap. In that place, I saw the story of another not from the clinical standpoint of one who reads a case-study in injustice, or even the exoticising manner in which an ‘objective’ white passive listener might hear the subject story of a person of colour. Instead, I heard my conversation-partner’s story from the vantage point of someone who was there also, cutting that sugar-cane under the burning sun. Were we side-by-side, or even there are the same time? Probably not – many Italian workers came to replace the ‘Kanakas’ when they were forcibly repatriated. Were our circumstances different? Profoundly. But still, we both recognised each other as being there in that part of history in that part of the world, and through our overlapping stories we connected in a real way.

It is these connections that undermine the segregating force of colonisation. That is what I mean about decolonising ourselves: I mean ‘ourselves’ in a collective sense, as in everyone. Decolonisation is, in part, the locating of connecting stories that make a lie of those big wide labels that colonisation has slapped on us all – even when those stories tell of differences in racism and privilege. It seems to me that hearing the story of another is important, and allowing the story to awaken the story in us: our own culture, our own experiences, our own privilege. We begin to peel back all our colour labels, and find the complexity of history and humanity underneath it all.

My reflection over the last week? That finding our deep selves cannot be done in isolation, and must be probed in dialogue with another, across difference. That’s what peeling back whiteness is about. It is this process that I’m committed to.

Sometimes a person leaves an organisation, and everybody breathes a big sigh of relief and says, “Thank God.” There has been a sense for a while that all the problems are caused by this one person, and if they left everything would be fine. Now that they are finally gone, we can just get on with things instead of wasting all our time on the trouble caused by this one person.

What we tend to forget, however, is that the ‘trouble-maker’ never exists in isolation, but is part of a broader organisational dynamic. How is this person allowed to get away with their bad behaviour? Why aren’t people challenging him? In what way is the person passing on pressures that have been placed on her? Why aren’t appropriate boundaries in place to guide the person’s work? In what way is the person ‘acting out’ a culture that exists more broadly in the organisation: for example, of control, or secrecy?

Grievance processes tend to take an adversarial approach, where it is presumed that one person is in the right and other person in the wrong. We are geared up to “expel the wicked brother” – but what happens when the ‘wickedness’ is not found in a single person, but pervades the organisation as a whole?

I think that generally, it is the latter that is the case, and what we need is processes that help us to discern and uncover the deeper, systemic problems that exist within organisations. Processes that resist laying blame on individuals, but presume that all of us, to a degree, are both responsible for and victim to pathology within organisations.

Pointing the blame at a single person is lazy. It feels good at the time to purge the organisation of perceived evil, but inevitably the problem, if it exists in the life-blood of the broader group, will re-emerge elsewhere. Processes that ask, “How are these problems systemic?” require time, and courage, and a great capacity for us to listen well to each other.

Some ideas that have informed this post include Rene Girard’s theories around mimetic desire and scapegoating, family systems theory, nonviolent communication methodology and a recent conversation I’ve been having with a friend about restorative justice.

Recently, at work, I was asked to organise a book launch. The book was a memoir of a woman who had dedicated her life to fighting for women's rights across the world. She was 80 now, and it was time to celebrate all that she and the wider movement had achieved. It was going to be a low-key event in our office, with a few friends and a couple of bottles of wine.

I talked with the author on the phone about cheese and book sales, put all the information into a spreadsheet, and began organising things. But as the date of the launch grew closer, it became evident that it was getting bigger and bigger, as the author kept thinking of more and more people she wanted to invite. Now there were 80 people coming, and I didn't know how they were all going to fit into the board room. The author started talking to me about booking other venues, like a bar or a bookshop. We began discussing canapés and sound-systems. I realised that the book launch had developed a life of its own, like a storm that was quickly approaching land.

This event wasn't really in my job description, and my boss was becoming concerned that it was taking my time and energy away from other work. She tried to arrange another person to take over the organising, but I felt strongly that it would be damaging if I was swapped out. I stayed the course.

But what what I did decide was that I needed help. I ran across the office to visit another colleague, and said, "Help!" And she did help. My colleague, it turned out, knew all about this approaching storm, which was the global women's right movement. We began to work together. Bit by bit, the book launch took on the form that it wanted to take. A volunteer went to the Victoria Market and talked to a delicatessen about our event, who then donated lots of delicious free cheese. It turned out that one of my other colleagues was a sommelier in a past life, so secured a wonderful selection of wines. We were getting reports about how the formalities were taking shape, and which feminist activists would be making an appearance. I began to feel excited about this event.

On the day, we moved all the furniture out of the board room and put out all the wine and cheese. Since the author was 80, a lot of her friends came ridiculously early, while we were still setting up the book sales table and moving chairs about. But it didn't matter and the room filled up with old friends and siblings and colleagues from 40 years ago, when second-wave feminism was being introduced to places like Kenya and Fiji. An activist who the author had worked with years ago came out in a ball gown and provided us with a dramatic celebration of the author's life, and another old friend entered in a sequinned dress and led us all in a group rendition of I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar. Suddenly I was in the middle of the global women's rights movement, at an event that I had organised. Or rather, what it felt like was that it was the movement that organised this event, and I was a participant.

Soon it was over and we kissed the author and her friends goodbye, and then it was just us, sitting in a circle to debrief. When it was my turn to speak, I joked that I had only agreed to organise this book launch because I was too new in my job to say no. The event was completely outside of my job description. But now, I felt privileged to be part of it, because I had my first real taste of the spirit of the global women's rights movement. It was a beautiful thing to sit back and see the women around me: both the ones I was with now, and the ones who had gone before.

I had a profound and transformative experience, in the moment I decided I needed help. The event went from this stressful thing of questionable necessity that I had to make happen on my own, to a soulful experience steeped in history and community, that I could simply partake in. Being at this event - even though I had lots of things to do - was deeply comforting. I had a lovely, soft sense of being held.

The other night I went on a date to see some comedy at the Comedy Festival, and the person I took was myself. I don't go out on my own very often - not unless you count going to the park at lunchtime, and I don't think that really counts. Dave was away and I was slurping some ramen after work, and I took out my phone and my credit card and booked myself a ticket to a show in one hour - just like that. It was the most decisive thing I've ever done. I considered complicating the affair by inviting a friend or a sister. But I decided that no, I needed to keep this one simple.

I walked along the Melbourne streets, huddled up in my boots and jacket and tights. I liked that feeling, and I liked the fresh autumn air on skin, cool as the twilight turned into night. I noticed the feeling inside of me too, which felt a little bit like being hungry, even though I had just eaten a big bowl of noodles. It was my familiar aloneness-hunger feeling, that I only really get now when Dave's been away for a week or so. I quite like this feeling, too. It's such a human thing to feel alone, and so in a funny way it makes me feel connected to the people around me. These days I'm not so desperate to sate my aloneness-hunger.

We filed into the venue, and of course I saw somebody I knew. I thought, "Yey, a friend!" and also, "Oh no she will think I'm a loser because I'm by myself!" I tapped her on the shoulder and we said a slightly awkward hello. I saw an empty seat on the edge of a row. I said to the lady sitting next to it, "Can I sit here?" and she said that was ok. I asked the lady if she could hold my plastic glass of of red wine while I took my coat off, and she stopped talking to the man on her other side so she could help me out. I sat down.

The comedian came on stage and the show began. I felt the closeness of the couple on my left, and the cavern of the empty isle on my right. I felt the presence of my friend and her friends over the way, and I noticed the guy sitting in front of me, who was also alone. I felt the wholeness of the group who had gathered to listen to someone being brave and to be pulled outside of themselves and to laugh. Eventually I stopped feeling alone, and felt part of this group, which existed for this one moment in time only.

The show ended and we flowed back out of the building to meet the night air. We joined a great pulsing gathering of people, who had come to be together on the streets of Melbourne that night. I wandered home to bed, still feeling a little hungry, but quite happy.

My friend and I were talking yesterday about the possibility of only doing things that we want to do, rather than acting out of this sense of obligation: I really should visit my grandmother; I really ought to clean the house.

Acting out of a sense of joy or play is a central tenet of nonviolent communication, where it is said that “an otherwise joyful activity performed out of obligation, duty, fear, guilt or shame will lose its joy and eventually engender resistance”. This quote is from a great little article by Marshall Rosenberg, one of the leaders in nonviolent communication education, called Don’t do anything that isn’t play!

Of course, there are things that, in a particular moment, I don’t want to do, like getting up early to do some exercise. What I want to do is to keep on sleeping. The question for me is: Is there a bigger want, that sits behind my immediate desire to keep snoozing? Am I choosing to exercise, because ultimately this is what I want?

I have often found the term ‘life-giving’ helpful. Is it life-giving to go to Pilates, to cook dinner, to visit a friend in hospital, to worship with my faith community, to go to work? I like this term because it is very broad and asks me to consider all dimensions of life: about myself, about others, about the earth, about the immediate moment and also beyond.

For me, something that is life-giving enriches my life, opens my perspectives and horizons, opens my heart, brings me joy and satisfaction. A life-giving thing feels good and right; it makes me feel more alive. Life-giving things also have those effects on other people and the planet. They are all-round good things.

For me ‘Is it life-giving?’ is a more helpful question than, “Do I want to do it?”

When I was in high school, Mum devised a really clever way to sort our school lunches. The context was that Mum had six kids and a husband, and it was a big job to look after us all. So once a week on a Saturday afternoon, Mum would load the kitchen table with a whole lot of bread, along with blocks of cheese, pats of butter, piles of ham, slices of roast beef and other sandwich-related items. Then she called all her kids together, and we all lined up into a kind of sandwich-making production-line.

We knew the drill. One kid would butter while the next sliced cheese; one would add fillings while another cut the sandwiches into halves. The last person would cocoon the final product in gladwrap, ready to be stored for future consumption.

I loved being on the Reale sandwich-making production-line: I had my little job and I knew how to do it. Sometimes I would even make a suggestion to improve overall efficiency: for example, if things were bottle-necking at the sandwich-filling area, I might suggest a light restructure to get things moving again. But it was Mum who really oversaw the end-to-end process, making sure that everybody had the required tools, insisting that people did not eat all the ham before it went in the sandwiches, and coming up with creative solutions when we ran out of key ingredients before the job was done.

The end goal was to produce five bags of sandwiches for each day of the school week, and to have each one filled with one sandwich per Reale kid (with the occasional addition if Dad was working off-site and needed a packed lunch). Sometimes a particular child needed to be specifically catered for. If Wednesday was cheese and vegemite day, for example, I would get something different, as it was well-known that Andreana hated vegemite. If Friday was peanut butter and sultana day (one of Mum's creative go-to options when both the ham and the cheese ran out), Pete would get a special edition because of his famous aversion to all types of nuts. Small stickers were produced and positioned on the gladwrap encasing the special sandwich, with appropriate initials written in biro to avoid any confusion.

The five bags would then go into the deep freezer, ready to be conveniently pulled out on each respective morning. Mum would then line up six lunch boxes on the kitchen bench, and deposit a frozen sandwich in each.

The theory was that the sandwich would defrost inside your lunch box and be thawed and ready to go by lunchtime. This was generally the case, except on particularly cold days when one might have a bit of icy ham to gnaw through. Also, the bread rolls tended to come out of the freezer less fresh than when they went in, resulting in a kind of shattering effect when one bit into them, followed by a shower of breadcrumbs all over one's uniform. These small glitches aside, the system worked remarkably well, and I'm impressed with Mum for inventing it and maintaining it for so many years.

The other weekend I listened as Mum reflected back on the Reale household's sandwich system, and for the first time I saw it through her eyes. For me, the sandwich-making production-line was just a normal part of life, as well as the occasional source of embarrassment when I endured the breadcrumb-shower at school. But for Mum, the devised system was a means of survival. Mum had to figure out a way to keep six kids fed on a shoestring budget, and in a way that preserved her sanity. She found a means to do that, while getting us kids to take a bit of responsibility for feeding ourselves.

The other day I caught up with someone who thought they might want to do grant-writing as a job, and was keen to hear all about it. I had never met anyone before who had actively decided that grant-writing might be their calling, and I was keen to meet this rare species of a human. We both ordered a glass of wine, and I proceeded to regale my aspiring grant-writer with tales of the greats ups and downs of the sport: the endless stream of deadlines, the great joy of writing the same thing in five hundred different ways in order to suit the sophisticated nuances of each precious snowflake of a funder.

At the end of all that she said, "Nah, I don't think grant-writing is really for me". I was flabbergasted. But we still had half a glass of wine left and so she added, "What I really want to do is be a social worker."

"Then why are we talking about grant-writing?" I asked.

And she answered with this terribly wise and self-aware statement, which was: "I don't want to inflict my too-young, saviour-orientated self onto other people, in order to cause more damage than good".

Wow. Actually, I tend to think that if someone is thinking that, they're a step ahead of most of us and maybe they should be unleashed onto the populace after all. But this young woman seemed much smarter than me, so I didn't interrupt. She continued with: "So what I'm doing now is getting a bunch of experience in the world doing all different things, and wising up".

I said to her, "Do you feel like you're sort of in an incubator, getting ready to be a social worker?"

She thought this seemed like an ok metaphor (maybe she was being polite), but I immediately regretted saying it. Actually I hate the idea of passively waiting to embody some future calling, with today's work really just marking time, or at best being used as a way to get ready for the 'real' work. I used this shitty metaphor because it's often been how I see my own work. I think it's time to let that one go.

I used to aspire to be a Baptist pastor, because I thought that would be a great occupation with lots of career opportunities for a young, left-leaning woman (lol). While I was doing the requisite study and trying to get a bit of experience, I did other kinds of work to pay the bills: namely, disability support work and grant-writing. Before wanting to be a pastor I wanted to be a writer, and I paid the bills by being a disaster risk reduction researcher. After wanting to be a paster I wanted to be a community organiser, and paid the bills by being a fundraising consultant.

In each of these cases I had decided what my 'real' work was (pastor, writer, community organiser), and cordoned off the other work as a means to the end. I drew a line in the sand between what I considered to be vocationally sacred, and what I considered to be not.

I would say I believed this stuff because I'm a member of Generation Y ("Follow your heart!") and also part of the church ("Find God's calling for your life!"). If I dig deep enough, I could probably also find a way to blame my parents too.

But who really cares. The point is, I've decided to put on a new pair of glasses, which imbues everything I do with the sacredness it deserves.

I have decided that every single moment is special and sacred, because we live in a universe with a life-force that courses through every person, atom, community, workplace, ocean, star and forest. We live in a universe where the act of making tea in the staff kitchen is pregnant with sparkly vibrating possibility. I can fill in funding submissions for the rest of my life, and it doesn't change that fact. Even the most boring, unglamorous part of any job is radically alive. The essence of God is found there.

I want to make my vocation this: being deeply present to the sacred now. Who knows where that path will lead?

Public and workplace bathrooms are otherwise relatively peaceful places, where one can take a reprieve from their day, check their voicemail and scroll through Facebook on their phone. Enter the hand-dryer, which is the epitome of overkill, and which insists on not just drying your hands with hygienic efficiency, but impersonating an industrial power tool at the same time.

A hand-dryer I knew once was sweet and soft. It wrapped your clammy hands in its gentle warmth, circulating its hot breeze around your fingers. It turned on when you gave it explicit permission (by pushing its big silver button), not when it just 'sensed' that the time is right.

I'm not talking about this hand-dryer today. I'm talking the ones that take the opportunity not only to dry your hands, but to scream about what they're doing for the rest of the floor to hear. Their unnecessarily powerful air-streams rattle cubical walls; their high-pitched howls assault my ears. When someone turns a modern hand-dryer on, I find myself focusing on deep-breathing to combat the anxiety that is rising in my gut. The only thing worse is when they turn themselves on, in an unjustified act of autonomy, just because someone happens to walk past. In these cases, I have no time to brace myself, and feel as though the hand-dryer has used an unfair surprise tactic to beat me down.

If it's between a hand-dryer and a paper towel, of course I go for the paper towel, even though I'm aware that forests are cleared so that people like me can enjoy single-use absorbent paper. If it's just me and the hand-dryer, what I've tended to do over the years is shake the excess water off my hands and wipe them dry on my clothes. Dave says this is unhygienic; I think what he really means is that it's very unclassy.

I had this realisation for myself fairly recently, when I was working at a place where all the employees except me came from very rich families. I remember a moment when I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, next to the receptionist. She had just endured the electric hand-dryer, and was now primly applying moisturising cream to her parched hands (one of the other perils of hand-dryers). I, on the other hand, was standing there with wet hand-marks strewn across the front of my pants. In a moment of enlightenment, I said, "I probably shouldn't dry my hands on my pants". She replied, "Yes, it's probably not the best look".

My conclusion is: there is no good way to dry one's hands when one is out and about, away from the soft and sustainable towels of home. I'm sorry to end on such a bleak note, but I think it's true.

I'm curious about others' experiences with hand-drying in public? Do you feel equally passionate in your hatred of electric hand-dryers? Are you thinking that I need to build a bridge and get over this? Are you aware of any better alternatives for drying one's hands in public? I really do want to know.

I read a book last night that said, "Unlike information, basic goodness cannot be transmitted, but only pointed out. The heart must wake up to what is already there."*

I love this statement. It tells of a profound and fundamental goodness that exists at the heart of humanity and indeed everything else. It tells us to be attentive to this goodness: to notice it, to be present to it, to point to it, to wake to it. It tells us that I can't make someone or something else 'good'; the job instead is to be alert to where this thing or person or land is already good.

The statement, I think, is the antithesis of the mentality behind colonialism. Colonialism assumes terra nullius - that no one is here, the land is empty, and nothing good exists in this place. The land is but a blank canvas for the sheep to be grazed and the crops to be grown. When people, stories and pre-existing economic systems become apparent, a kind of willful blindness ensues, and a myth is told and repeated that says that we were responsible for everything 'good' that you see.

Sometimes we try to colonise people as well - and I'm not just talking about the way that Europeans have tried to colonise indigenous people across the world. I'm talking about friends, colleagues, partners, children, clients. We try to colonise people when we try to fix them, with no regard to the treasures that are already contained within.

Have you ever done that before? I have.

There is a different way of being, and that is to assume a posture of humble anticipation of what is already here. What treasures exists that I can't yet see, but if I am present to this person or place, may in time be revealed?

I think that the opposite of colonialism is presence: that is, the discipline of arriving, waiting and opening my heart to the deep goodness of what is already here. It is knowing the goodness that is in me also. It is trusting that in time we will each be able to take out our treasures and put them on the table, and eat together.

My grandfather has built many houses. The house I know best is the one that sits on a corner block, a stone’s throw from the Rye foreshore. I have slept many nights in familiar-smelling sheets in that house, dragged shoes full of sand across the carpet in that house, worried about zits in the sun-filled bathroom of that house, and eaten thickly buttered raison toast in bed with Gran in that house. This was the last house my grandfather built.

My grandfather is no longer with us, and a few months ago Gran moved out, into a nursing home. The house is still there, and I think a lot about it and its riotous garden, which I imagine right now is a giddy wash of spring colour. I haven’t been there since Gran left, but I imagine that everything is still in its place: the two big moss-green armchairs in which my grandparents watched the footy and The Bill; Gran’s beloved piano in the front room topped with a photo of two-year-old me playing it; the mustard-upholstered chrome-legged school by the kitchen bench, next to the phone and the bowl of liquorice allsorts. If I sat there again, I might imagine talking politics with my grandfather while he does the washing up.

Last time I visited Gran at the house, she tried to give me the photo of little Andreana playing the piano. I conveniently forgot to take it home; it’s still sitting there on the piano. Because when I think about it, what I actually want is for that house and those things to be there forever, in the same spots. I want the house to remain as it is, always.

Humans, stories and things

I have heard it said that humans are the only creatures that tell stories, and that this, in fact, is the defining feature of our humanity. It is the story we tell of ourselves – where we come from, where we are going – that is, in a sense, who we are. Our narrative is our identity; we are our story.

I have just finished a wonderful stint at the National Trust, who describe themselves as story-tellers. The interesting thing about this organisation is that it is chiefly occupied by material places and objects. I have often pondered this: why are these things so important? Why is it not enough to just tell stories; why is it important that they are somehow told while standing in the servant quarters of the ornate mansion, or hovering close to the hand-printed floral silk cape?

The reason, I think, is because as enfleshed creatures, our ability to remember is rested in some profound way on the ground on which we walk and the things we can pick up in our hands. Our stories, it seems, are best served when they are embodied in physicality. This is why I want my grandparents’ house to be there forever, with the same fiddly lock on the front gate and the magpie statue still perched by the heater.

From what I understand, the rooting of memory and story in physical place is, for many Aboriginal people, extraordinarily strong – to the point where the land and all it contains is sacred. I think that settler people like myself only experience the very beginning of that connection, because our relationship to this place is so recent and so fraught. This is why we often crave a return to our homelands (for me this is in Europe), to find where our ancestors lived and where they are buried. Our homeland is where a large part of our story – and therefore our identity – abides.

Why we need heritage conservation in Australia

If our identity-forming stories find their homes in the physical places and objects of our lives, then it is vitally important that these things are conserved. This, I believe, is the raison d'être of heritage conservation.

In Australia, the work of heritage conservation is critical. We are a country with a tense, conflicted relationship with our physical place, because we are a nation founded on a place that is stolen from others. It was not just the land that was thieved, but its memory-containing markers as well: the stone houses knocked to the ground, the farm land destroyed by sheep, the water sources muddied and fenced off.* It was an erasure not just of things but of memories; an attempt to render the land terra nullius (because it wasn’t), and make room for the physical markers and legitimising stories of a new people.

Even though founded on theft, the physical markers of the colonisers and all that came after them (where they lived, what they wore, on what they sat) are deeply important. These are the frames on which to hang the stories of the past. And whether we like it or not, these are the stories that tell us who we are.

When we are able to celebrate our 80,000+ year old civilisation (the oldest continuing culture in the world!), moan the way it has been disrespected and abused and acknowledge its resilience, remember the colonisers and the destructive, wild and brave lives they lived, and embrace the memories of our many waves of migrants – it is then that we will know our story. And when we come to terms with our story – look it in the face, know its shape and its texture, its beautiful bits and its ugly bits – it is then that we will be able to heal as a nation.

Our stories are our essence, and our humanity seems to demand that these stories are embodied in stone, dirt, sap, water, wool, acrylic, wood and flesh. The physical places and objects of our lives contain so much of who we are – and this is why heritage conservation is so very important.

* If you’re interested in reading more about the agricultural practices of Aboriginal people in Australia, check out Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu.

Recently I wrote a post about the right we have to speak into public debate, and concluded that the more we are impacted by an issue, the more ‘standing’ we have to speak about it. My musings have come out of some work I have been doing trying to organise to stop the City of Melbourne passing by-laws that will ban rough sleeping. I want to reflect specifically about this issue now, and the standing with which I feel I can (or should) activate on this issue.

The street as urban commons

I want to begin by thinking about the street, and the kind of space that it is. One way we can think of the street is as an essential part of the ‘urban commons’. Traditionally in England the ‘commons’ were open areas within communities that were shared by many people: to graze livestock, to farm crops if you didn’t have land of your own. In a similar way, the streets are shared by many different people doing many different things: walking, driving, busking, socialising, selling, buying. The streets are a resource shared by many.

The commons work when there are shared ways of managing them – otherwise, some people might take more than their fair share and not leave enough for others: a problem known as “the tragedy of the commons”. Noble Prize-winner Elinor Ostrom argued that a system of checks and balances must be in place for the ‘commons’ to be sustained. In the case of the street, the space is managed largely by state and local governments, who set laws and have the power to enforce them, as well as a level of self-managing by users who negotiate the space between themselves.

The question then is: What rules will be set in place to govern who gets to use this collective resource and how? At some point a balance needs to be struck: between those traveling, those singing, those protesting, those trading, those sleeping. There is no objectively-sound way of doing this – invariably some people and users will be privileged over others. This is because rule-makers share the commons as well, and can’t be objective.

Excluding people from the urban commons

Right now, in Melbourne, the local government rule-makers have decided that they do not want some types of street users: specifically, they do not want people who are needing to use the street for sleeping. Their claim is that they are attempting to balance the needs of all users, because the streets are becoming cluttered and unsafe due to rough sleepers taking up too much room. There is some validity in this: a balance does need to be struck between pedestrians (particularly those who are not able-bodied) and people sleeping out due to homelessness.

But local government is attempting to strike disproportionately at only one set of users: the people who have been most dramatically failed by our community, such that they are forced to endure the indignity of homelessness. This is a curtailing of access to the commons, and one that is reminiscent of the ‘enclosures’ that saw the end of the commons in England, which privatised once-public land and shut out the users who needed it most, creating a class of landless workers.

My ‘standing’ to speak out on by-laws banning rough sleeping

Where is my standing to speak on this issue? As a member of the Melbourne community, I am a user of the commons, and as such I want to live in a city with an urban commons that is as open and generous as possible. If our streets become places where some people are not welcome because they are in too much need, then this is indicative of a society that has lost both its heart and its perspective. Today I have a bed in an apartment, but tomorrow may be different. Tomorrow I might need to draw from the commons of the street in order to sleep, or maybe it will be a friend. Banning rough sleeping takes away my right to use a common resource, and yours too. This is my standing to speak out on this issue.

Having said that, I still think that some people are closer to this issue than I am (because they have been or are homeless), and that it is important to prioritise their voices and act in solidarity with them. The organised voice of the homeless community in Melbourne, the Homeless Persons Union of Victoria, has been incredibly vocal against these by-laws, and similarly many individuals with lived experience of homelessness have spoken out against them. While consensus amongst such a diverse and disparate group is not possible, it is safe to say that on this issue at least there is widespread agreement that these by-laws are bad. I stand in solidarity with these voices.

An important dimension to being a good ally is proximity to the people you purport to be prioritising. Otherwise, how do you know you’ve got it right? This is something I am working on right now: being responsive to people on the street especially when they try to engage with me; finding mutual spaces where we can converse. I find this is a constant challenge, because my life often tugs me away from people experiencing marginalisation, and towards people who hold more privilege.

To sum up…

I believe I have standing to speak into the public conversation about whether people needing to sleep rough have a right to use the street, because I am also a stakeholder in the ‘urban commons’ that the street represents. I want these commons to be as open and generous as possible, because I want them to be available for myself and my community when we need them. Yet I also recognise that some people have more standing than myself to speak into this issue, because they have direct experience of homelessness. My goal and my desire is to speak in solidarity with them.

Do you agree that everybody should have a right to use our ‘urban commons’ to sleep, if they need it?

This year I have been organising around proposed changes to City of Melbourne by-laws that, if passed, would ban rough sleeping. I am horrified by this possibility. However, my activity has caused me to think hard about my right to use my voice on this issue – especially since I have never experienced homelessness before.

There is a legal principle known as ‘standing’, that I think is useful there. ‘Standing’ is essentially the right to commence legal proceedings. Basically, if you want to take someone to court, you have to have something to lose. The issue arises most often in administrative law (that is, the laws that govern the activities of government agencies). For example, if someone seeking asylum wants to challenge a decision made about their right to stay in the country, their standing is generally fairly apparent since they will be materially affected by the decision. If a public interest group wanted to challenge the issue, however, they would likely have more trouble establishing they have a private right or a special interest to be protected, and probably would not be granted standing.

I am currently thinking about what it means to extrapolate this legal principle of standing from the world of law to the realm of public debate. What if I publically assert my opinion as to what is right and wrong only when I am able to show that I am affected by the issue at stake? Otherwise, if I weigh in on a debate on some topic that doesn’t actually impact me, it raises important questions as to what my motives might be. They may, in fact, not actually be aligned with the interests of those who are actually or most affected.

The way the law of standing is played out in the courts is strict and individualistic, and I don’t mean to say that we should adopt the same tough tests when it comes to giving people a voice in public debate. After all, the court room and the public stage are two different spaces. But I do think the concept of thinking carefully about who has a right to contribute their voice – and who does not – is a useful one.

It is imperative that struggles for positive social change are led by those who are most oppressed by the system being challenged. It is these people who understand most intimately the nature of the oppression, and can articulate an alternative that does not simply perpetuate more injustice. People seeking asylum should lead debates about justice for asylum seekers. The voices of people with lived experience of homelessness should be centre stage as our community grapples with how to engage with homelessness. These groups have the most direct ‘standing’ in the issue at hand, because they really do have something to lose or gain, based on the outcome of the public debate.

“Nothing about us without us” pretty much sums this up: a slogan taken up powerfully by the disability rights movement, who refused the patronising voices of others speaking on their behalf. What they did instead was turn up the volume on their own voices. It is their voices, after all, that are most relevant and insightful when it comes to disability rights.

As for those of us less affected, but concerned nonetheless? We need to think carefully about how issues we care about affect us personally. That way, if we choose to be allies to others who are more directly impacted, we do so in genuine, fully-embodied solidarity, not intellectual paternalism. And then we move over to make sure the right people are taking up the air time.

As Murri artist, activist and academic Lilla Watson challenges us:

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mind, then let us work together.”

I can think of times where I have not done this well, which is why it’s important that I’m thinking it through now. What is my ‘standing’ in relation to the rough sleeping issue? How might I activate in solidarity, rather than paternalism? Stay tuned, because that will be the subject of my next post.

The “bollart” in the Melbourne CBD is pretty much my favourite thing right now. I love the way the eminently practical and utilitarian response of government (“we need something to protect pedestrians from crazy drivers and we need it now”) has been met by the creativity and good humour of the people. I love it that it was completely unintentional.

(For those who have missed it or who live in other places, the government has responded to a spate of ‘vehicle attacks’ on pedestrians by blocking off certain areas with concrete blocks. They are big, grey and ugly, and the good people of Melbourne have decided that they need some decorating.)

I love the patchwork sleeves people have measured up and sewn. I love the stencil art and the pasted-on pictures, and the one I discovered today covered entirely in Lego. I love the political slogans and imagery, and the talk-back written in texta and chalk. I love the people who are setting up chessboards on these things, and the little boys who use them to jump over, army-style. I even love the people who stand around them and smoke and use the holes in the top as ashtrays, as though that is what they are there for. The whole thing makes me love humans again.

The bollart reminds me of two other things:

(1) When the Chilean Government built these half-houses out of concrete, because people urgently needed housing after an earthquake.

They are just concrete shells with wiring and stuff, but the people came and added the other halves themselves, mustering all the skills, good humour, timber and coloured paint that they had. This is “government utilitarianism meets community creativity” at its best.

(2) When local councils make funds available to community groups, to do cool interesting stuff to make their local area better. Like this community garden project that my friend Dan was involved in in Box Hill.

Council could build a garden themselves, but they recognise that sometimes the role of government is to extend an invitation to the community. They know that community simply does some things better.

I heard that the ‘ugly bollards’ will soon be replaced by super-tough but more aesthetically-pleasing ‘street furniture’. But I’m a bit sad about this because it means that government will do all the creative work for us. There will no longer be a role for the unexpected and immeasurably fun work of the people. Although having said that, I'm sure the people will think of something else to do!